(piano music) - We're in the Mauritshuis in
the Hague in the Netherlands, and we're looking at probably
the most famous painting by Jacob van Ruisdael. This is a landscape of
the city of Haarlem. - And it's recognizably Haarlem, because of the church of Saint Bavo, that rises above the skyline. But most of the painting is cloud. It is a landscape. A new type of painting in
the 17th century, in Holland. In a way I wish this
was called a skyscape. - There is a long tradition of landscape, and you can find some landscape
from the ancient world. You can find some early
examples in the renaissance, but their almost always
subsidiary to something else. Here we have a landscape that
is very much about this place. It is a portrait of a city. - A portrait of someone's love of a city. Built into these portraits of a place is the artists feeling and attachment. We have Vermeer painting Delft, where he lived most of his life. We have van Ruisdael painting
Haarlem, where he lived. - At least one artist has suggested that this may have been
commissioned by the person who owned linen works that
we see in the foreground. If you look closely those are not the
fields of a farm in the foreground, but rather they're broad
areas where linen is laid out, so that the sun can bleach it. This is a partly cloudy day, and the sun is only
partially reaching that. In fact Ruisdael has effectively
used both light and shadow to draw our eye back into
the depth of the landscape. - There are alternating
planes of light and dark. We start in the very foreground in shadow. We move to those bleaching
fields return the sunlight. Then another area of shadow, and then another area of sunshine
where we see an open field. And then shade, and then light, and then the church in the distance. This helps our eye to move into space, and to travel through the landscape. - And to do it slowly, and to lead our eye
lovingly through the space. Now Holland is a very flat country, so one might wonder where
the artist is standing, to have this great perspective. If you look carefully
at the very foreground between the grasses you can
just make out that that's sand. and this is likely a dune, that is giving him this kind of elevation. - Well, he's probably sketched outside. We're so used to thinking
about artist painting outside with tubes of paint, but this was likely
constructed in the studio. - 70 percent of this canvas
is given over to the sky. To these beautiful billowing clouds, and the sense that
everything is in motion. - Right, and it's a
very specific landscape. In Italy at this time
the Italian painters are, and French painters too, are painting idealized,
classicizing landscapes. Where it's always perfectly sunny. It's always the spring. Here we have a sense of
weather, time, specificity that makes this town enduring. Even as time passes, even
as those clouds go by. Even as the gap of light
changes on the landscape. - That change is such a hallmark
of this historical moment. Stylistically we call the
Baroque, the 17th century. Where a kind of dynamism
within the static landscape is brought to the foreground. - That's right, even within
portraits we get a sense of the dynamic of movement. Even in genre scenes. There's this interest in
things that are in process. We certainly have that here, in this beautiful landscape by Ruisdael.